


après nous, le déluge

by akaiiko



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Actual Literal Bodice Ripping, All About That Aesthetique, Alternate Universe - 1700s France, Blood Drinking, Breathplay, Brief Mentions of Fantastical Racism, Corsetry, Costume Parties & Masquerades, Lowkey Virginity Kink, M/M, Master/Pet, Possessive Behavior, Public Sex, Vampires
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-23
Updated: 2019-09-23
Packaged: 2020-10-26 11:57:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,656
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20741828
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/akaiiko/pseuds/akaiiko
Summary: Keith learns how to play the games of Versailles.“Don’t give me that look,” Shiro says. His voice is oddly rough, but his eyes spark with that earlier hunger that Keith glimpsed in the salon. It’s just as intoxicating as it was the first time. More, even, with the symphony of moans and the scent of blood on the air.“What look?” When his Master only huffs with something that might be amusement or frustration, Keith says again, “What look?”“The one you’re giving me now.” Releasing Keith’s chin, he skims his fingertips down Keith’s neck. Calluses catch on the tender skin with a rasp that tingles long after his touch has gone. “Like you want me to devour you.” His thumb rubs over the jut of Keith’s collarbone. “No, more like you want me to ruin you.”Ruination has never sounds quite so appealing as it does when Shiro says it in that tone of voice. Breathless, Keith asks, “Do you want to ruin me?”





	après nous, le déluge

**Author's Note:**

> everyone can bless [@shiroblush](https://twitter.com/shiroblush) for this. i mean. who else would have the godtier concept of "vampires in versailles" and then hand it off to me??? a legend, tbqh.

Perhaps this is punishment for speaking out of turn. Shame burns at the nape of Keith’s neck at thinking so—Shiro has never been cruel to him, not like so many vampiric masters would be, it’s petty to assume that he would start now and in this way. And yet…

It does not feel like an exaggeration to say that he has faced battlefields less daunting than the bit of fabric and whalebone laid before him. Keith has never owned anything this fine. Nor has he wanted to. There’s no use to giving a colony born halfbreed a corset. Certainly not a corset made by the same artisan who serves the King’s current favorite du Barry. The workmanship shows in the gleam of the red silk, in the delicacy of the black lace, in the way that Keith knows without touching that it will feel exquisite against his skin.

Romelle tuts at him. “It will not _ bite_.” Despite the scold, Keith relaxes a touch. Like him—unlike all others in Versailles—her accent still carries the cadences of the colonies. “But Captain Shirogane might if we don’t have you ready in time.”

“No,” Keith says. “He’ll just leave me behind.” Just barely, he manages to bite his tongue against the bitterest word: _ again_.

Each evening for the past month has seen him bidding good luck and good hunting to his master. They had not been separated so many nights in a row since he’d first come into Shiro’s service. It stung to know he’d been counted a liability when the time came for his Master to do battle in the salons and lavish ballrooms of Versailles rather than the forests and muddied fields of New France. No one had been surprised when he finally broke protocol, only that Shiro had seemingly indulged him.

Coming to him in a swish of lace frothed skirts, Romelle tips her chin up and meets his gaze. Despite her fondness for court fashions—she will beggar them with the cost of her hair ribbons alone—she is still a woman who survived the Seven Year War. The challenge in her gaze is enough to remind him of that, if he ever forgets. “Well then,” she says, “Don’t give him a reason to leave you behind.”

* * *

Evening comes on and the servants begin to light the lamps. Against Romelle’s orders, Keith takes the back ways through the manor and slips into the lavender salon without a single soul noticing his passage. There is no one to witness his collapse onto an overstuffed setee, or to judge the faint tremble to his limbs. At best guess he has a quarter hour to compose himself before Shiro and the Comtesse collect him.

Keith will need every minute.

All his life he’s resembled the feral cats commonly found at frontier forts. Wary in temperment and rangy in build. That was before Romelle had trussed and preened him to the best of her considerable ability. Now he resembles nothing so much as a lady’s lapcat.

It’s the silk, he tells himself, and the lace. The dark cloak lined with ermine that brushes against his bare skin in a way that feels even more decadent than the corset. None of that changes _ him_. Beneath all this finery he’s the same as he’s ever been. Dhampir, soldier, bastard. That ought to comfort him. For the first time in his life, it does not.

On the mantle is a gilt monstrosity of a clock. Keith stares it down the way he used to stare down enemies on the battlefield. Inhale to feel the tension in his limbs, and exhale to release it. That’s how he learned to snipe and he thinks it will be how he learns to wear a corset.

God, he hopes the clock is wound too tightly to account for the way the minutes speed along. In the colonies that ugly clock could’ve bought a farm, incorrectly wound or not.

The salon door opens at a minute til half past seven. Keith is composed enough not to flinch, but only just. Even without looking he knows that Shiro—that the Captain, his _ Master_—waits in the doorway. As always, and despite everything, that steady presence quiets his heartbeat. Mustering whatever elegance he might posses, he rises to his feet and executes the bow he’d been taught on the ship over from New France.

Shiro crosses the room in five strides. Paris, in general, is built far too small for a man of his proportions. Though he stops a respectable enough distance away, especially for what they are to one another, he cannot help the way he looms over Keith. In the flickering candlelight he is unfairly handsome.

In all truth, he thought he’d become somewhat immune to his Master. They spent years together in New France, and they’ve spent months together in Paris, and he…

Well, he _ hoped _ that he’d grown used to the sight of Shiro in the well cut black coat and fawn breeches of his officer’s uniform. To the gleam of medals and fangs. To the fluttering of his own needy pulse when their eyes meet. Perhaps he had. When he stood before Shiro dressed as a dhampir, a soldier, a _ bastard_. Someone who would never be more or less than a servant. Only now he’s dressed as a treasured pet in a corset that makes him intimately aware of his own delicate build. And it turns out that whatever he thought or hoped, he is _ not _ immune.

Amusement tilts the corners of Shiro’s mouth. Slowly, near predatorily, he leans down. As he does so, his uniform pulls taut at the shoulders as though struggling to contain his well muscled form. “I’m surprised you didn’t change your mind.”

Tilting his chin up, Keith says, “I’m not a coward.”

“Changing your mind would not be cowardice,” Shiro chides. Too gently. Fingertips brush back Keith’s dark hair and skim over his flushed cheekbones. “Versailles is dangerous. More dangerous than you can imagine.” Still too gently, he cups Keith’s cheek in his callused palm. “I did not order you to follow me.”

Heat surges in Keith’s veins. For a breathless moment he longs—so fiercely he aches with it—to turn his face and press a kiss to the center of his Master’s palm. Instead he nudges more firmly against Shiro’s hand and says, “You never do.”

“Oh,” a feminine voice says. “Oh my.”

There’s a faint sense of regret when Shiro’s hand falls from his cheek and he steps away. Keith forces himself not to mourn the loss of contact. At least they are still shoulder to shoulder as they face the interloper.

When he looks to the doorway, he’s not surprised to see the Comtesse dé Altea standing there. He manages another bow, this time with a murmured, “Comtesse.”

“Allura,” she corrects absently. Tapping at his chin with her fan, she looks him over in practiced assessment. The Comtesse has been kind during their time in residence. Keith reminds himself of that to keep from bristling when she gives a final, decisive nod. “It seems our Captain was correct. You’ll do quite well.”

It does not come easily to him, but he ekes out a quiet, “Thank you.” Shiro rewards him with a hand at his lower back, thumb rubbing over the dip of his spine in silent approval for the good manners.

Snapping open her fan, the Comtesse herself waves it lazily in a motion that both accepts and dismisses his thanks. Aristocrats. “I beg you don’t thank me,” she says. When he just looks at her, she tilts her head before adding, “Has our dear Captain not told you what your role is to be this evening?”

No, he had only sent a queen’s ransom in clothing and jewelry to Keith’s room and subsequently expressed his surprise at Keith’s persistence.

Apparently she reads as much from his face. With a gentle incline of her head, she says, “You are to be a distraction as the masque tonight. Doubtless you’ll be quite successful at it. There will be many eager to put their hands on you.”

Keith’s stomach drops. Everyone in the manse knew that his Master and the Comtesse had been going out each night to mingle with their equals in Versailles. That they played dangerous games to unknown ends. But he hadn’t thought that his part in it would be to parade for the amusement of vampiric aristocrats who all want a taste of the forbidden.

Still a dhampir then, and a bastard, and a—

“No one is going to touch him,” Shiro says. The contrast to his earlier tone is startling. No longer gentle, but instead as commanding as it had ever been on the battlefield. The hand at his back presses in more firmly. Almost possessively. Keith half imagines he can feel the heat of it even through his cloak and corset.

For her part, the Comtesse appears lazy and nearly catlike in her amusement. But Keith doesn’t miss the way she takes a half step back, as if the malevolent vampiric energy coursing off his Master has affected even her. “No?”

“_No._”

The Comtesse shrugs, her lips turning up in a mischievous smile. “As you say, then.” Like none of this had mattered at all. Simply another game. With nobility—even the kind ones—it’s always another game.

“When I came down earlier I ran into your manservant. He mentioned the carriages are ready,” Shiro says. They’ve only been in residence for a month and a fortnight, but Keith’s learned that this is the closest anyone will get to giving the Comtesse a direct order.

As always, it seems to amuse her. “Then I will go on ahead. It’s best I be in place when you arrive. Good hunting to us both.” The Comtesse pauses, then looks back to Keith consideringly. “Or perhaps I ought to say good hunting to us all.” With that she dips her chin in a nod—which necessitates that he bow _ again_—before disappearing with near unsettling grace considering the mass of her skirts.

Keith thinks longingly of the colonies and the relative simplicity of the war. Rough living it had been, sleeping in mud and dodging bullets, but he preferred it to this.

With his hand still at the small of Keith’s back, Shiro steps so he stands before Keith once more. It’s an easy movement that tucks their bodies closely to one another. For the moment, they are alone, Shiro’s bulk hiding him from the open doorway. A knuckle catches under Keith’s chin and lifts.

Obediently, Keith tips his face up and looks into his Master’s eyes. The expression on Shiro’s face is familiar though has never before been directed at Keith. Out in the field tents of the war, he saw this expression before Shiro made decisions that won battles and cost lives. Stoicism and icy detachment—appropriate to a vampiric master. “Allura was correct,” he says. “You will be a distraction. And you know how the fully blooded react to dhampir.”

“Yes,” Keith says. Instinct causes him to reach out, his fingers finding and clutching the fine cotton of Shiro’s shirt as if for comfort. There’s barely any space left between them, now.

“You can still change your mind,” Shiro says, voice rougher than expected.

“No,” Keith says. “Please I— I can do do this. Let me do this.”

Hunger flares in Shiro’s eyes. Turns them dark and hot and dangerous. Leaning down, he nudges the tip of his nose against Keith’s temple. It’s a brief moment—barely a heart’s beat long—but it scorches Keith’s veins and brings a hot flush to his cheeks. “You’ll be the dawn of me, pet.”

* * *

The rules are laid out for him during the carriage ride. He is to use every one of the pretty manners taught to him on the ship from New France. He is to keep his mask on at all times. And he is to refer to Shiro _ only _ as his Master. Keith agrees to all terms.

It’s not as if he has much of a choice. Staying by Shiro’s side in this requires obedience, and that he quickly learn how to play the games that full blooded vampires seem so terribly natural at.

Clearly sensing his unease, Shiro reaches for him as the carriage joins the long line of carriages before Versailles’ grand entrance. This time he reaches with his prosthetic, a sleek clockwork contraption powered by magical wards that moves as smoothly as a human limb despite being forged of metal. Cupping Keith’s jaw with his hand, he says, “I’ll protect you.”

“And I’ll obey you,” Keith returns.

Whatever he’s expecting, it’s not the low growl in his Master’s throat or the way his eyes flash gold. The moment feels like a lightning strike. Charged and all too brief. Keith longs to chase it. To chase Shiro.

“Mask on,” Shiro says. He withdraws his hand then and leans back, returning them to an appropriate distance from one another that would draw no attention or question. The moment is lost. Had been lost long before Shiro spoke.

Keith picks up his half mask—a delicate thing molded for his face and covered in black silk and red lace. It settles over his nose and cheekbones, obscuring all but his eyes, in a way that Romelle had proclaimed made him exotic. As Keith ties the ribbons to keep it in place, he does not feel terribly exotic. “Will I do?” he asks. It’s meant in jest.

Perhaps his Master does not take it that way. “As always,” he says, lips twisting into a wry and nearly rueful smile, “you will be the most beautiful creature in the room.”

A blush chases across Keith’s skin, staining his cheeks and the tips of his ears. “I—” he begins, then stops because he doesn’t know how he ought to respond. Denial seems easiest. But he doesn’t want to deny the idea of Shiro finding him beautiful. Not even for ease.

In the end it does not matter. They reach the front of the line of carriages. Shiro ties on his own half mask—a simple silk one dyed an indigo so deep it’s nearly black. A human footman opens the door and gestures them out onto the drive. Once again, the moment is gone and Keith is left with only the longing.

* * *

Versailles is golden.

Each hall they pass through seems grander in scale than the last. Some are as wide as a Paris street, and as tall as a church nave. All of them are covered in lavish flourishes. Richly detailed paintings, marble and gilt and mirrors, chandeliers that glitter like diamonds. The dazzling opulence ensures that he doesn’t know where to look.

Yet it’s not just the palace itself. Aristocrats swarm the halls like exotic butterflies. One woman’s wig is so impossibly tall that it seems she’ll topple clear over. A young fop has a waterfall of lace at his wrists and seed pearls embroidered on his coat. Not a one dresses in anything less fine than silk, and all of them wear a year or more’s worth of wages for a working man on their person in the form of gems. Great and terrible wealth is on display and nothing in Keith’s admittedly limited experience compares. 

“Stay close,” Shiro commands, his hand coming to rest once more at the small of Keith’s back. “I won’t have you getting stolen away.”

Just like that, all he can focus on is the steady press of Shiro’s hand and the possessive lilt of Shiro’s words. _ Stolen away_. Not lost—like an idiot boy who wanders off into a dazzling fairyland of a palace. But _ stolen_.

Keith can’t imagine who would steal him. The clothing he’d thought was the height of indulgent fashion pales in comparison to the high society teeming around them. Even when he feels eyes on him, it seems more likely that they’re judging him for his soldier’s gait or his carefully blank expression rather than because they see anything worth coveting.

The deeper they get into the palace, the more aristocrats disappear in pursuit of other amusements. Of those that are left, most are human. Roughly half are clearly nobility. Not just nobility, he amends, but well-titled and likely well-landed nobility. The other half are more ambiguous. Perhaps a kind of demimonde. Not all are human though. More than a few of their companions bear the marks and presence of the full blooded.

“Where are we going?”

Ducking closer, so that his lips nearly brush against the tip of Keith’s ear, Shiro says, “A masque given by Prince Lotor.”

No one appears to be paying them much mind. Keith dares to look toward Shiro and slow their pace. “Prince?” he asks. While he admittedly did not pay as much attention to the lines of nobility as he ought’ve during the passage over, he distinctly remembers that the Prince is named Louis. They are seemingly all named Louis.

“He’s a _ prince étranger_.”

Biting his lip, Keith mulls over the new information. A foreign Prince holding a masque at Versailles. It seems odd. Were there more time he would ask, and he regrets now that he’d spent all that time in the carriage mooning over how terribly handsome Shiro looks instead of asking useful questions.

They’re swept along with the tide of humanity into a series of linked galleries that are somehow even more ornate than the halls. Bodies fill the space and overheat the air. It smells of a thousand expensive perfumes and sweat.

Keith takes it all in with eyes gone wide behind his mask. The first gallery is ordinary enough, full of laughing aristocrats with champagne in hand, like he’s seen at the Comtesse’s salons. The gallery room has gaming tables, and piles of gems in place of chips, and what appears to be a champagne fountain. But the third gallery…

Well, the third is full of scantily clad thralls in the laps of whomever has decided to claim them for the evening.

Back in the colonies he couldn’t have imagined this level of public debauchery. Not even in the bawdy houses he was occasionally obliged to visit. It’s less the bared skin that surprises him and more the open feeding. Just now the center of attention is a woman who can’t be much older than Romelle, generous tits spilling out of her gown’s ripped bodice and neck smeared with red streaks that might be rouge or blood. Another woman feeds from her wrist and gropes beneath her skirts.

“I am not going to be a sufficient distraction.” He says this quietly, without any intention of being heard or answered. It’s simple acknowledgement.

A familiar hand grips his chin between thumb and forefinger. For a scant moment it’s gentle. Unlike Shiro’s earlier touches, it does not remain that way. The fingers tighten and force him to look into Shiro’s eyes. Just as his words are less reassurance than command: “You will be.”

“But—”

Leaning down, Shiro bumps their foreheads together in a move that is nearly tender. His free arm curls around Keith’s waist, pulling them together in a mimicry of a lover’s embrace. “Are you going to disobey me so early, pet?”

Keith’s breath hitches in his throat and he feels another damnable flush staining his throat. “N-no,” he says. “No, I’m—” The words keep sticking in his throat, and his heart feels like one of the songbirds the Comtesse keeps in golden cages. Helpless and longing. Finally he manages a soft: “No, Master.”

“Good boy.” For all the decadent distractions this room offers, not one holds a candle to the pleased tilt of his Master’s mouth as he shapes that tidbit of praise. “I know this night will not be what you’re used to. But you will be splendid, pet.”

Sometimes Keith thinks this would all be so much easier if Shiro were simply handsome or powerful. Many vampires are both of those things. But Shiro is more than that—he is kind, and gentle, and once held Keith together on a ruined battlefield with his will alone. For him, Keith will do anything. _ Be _ anything. “Master... “

“Don’t give me that look,” Shiro says. His voice is oddly rough, but his eyes spark with that earlier hunger that Keith glimpsed in the salon. It’s just as intoxicating as it was the first time. More, even, with the symphony of moans and the scent of blood on the air.

“What look?” When his Master only huffs with something that might be amusement or frustration, Keith says again, “What look?”

“The one you’re giving me now.” Releasing Keith’s chin, he skims his fingertips down Keith’s neck. Calluses catch on the tender skin with a rasp that tingles long after his touch has gone. “Like you want me to devour you.” His thumb rubs over the jut of Keith’s collarbone. “No, more like you want me to ruin you.”

Ruination has never sounds quite so appealing as it does when Shiro says it in that tone of voice. Breathless, Keith asks, “Do you want to ruin me?”

This time, the huff is definitely amusement. Shiro steps closer, forcing Keith to step back. It’s so much like the one time the Comtesse tried to teach him to waltz that it’s amusing. Or at least it would be, if he wasn’t so _ aware _ of his Master’s bulk looming over him. They move like this a few more steps, until an alcove closes around them and leaves only the faint glitter of golden candlelight in his periphery.

Leaning down once more, Shiro nips at the edge of Keith’s jaw in a way that is equal parts demanding and requesting. “I want to do many things to you, pet.” Air hisses through his dropped fangs as Keith tilts his head back, baring his neck, and he breathes the next words against the thrum of Keith’s pulse: “Ruination is the least of them.”

Somewhere behind Shiro, someone lets out a loud and extremely pointed cough.

They both jolt, and the sound of the room beyond rushes back into Keith’s awareness. Part of him—a senseless part that’s spent too much time around Romelle—feels like he ought to cover his neck and chest with his hands. The rest of him manages to quash that instinct.

More’s the better, because when Shiro releases him and turns to greet the intruder it turns out to be none other than Commandant Thace. Keith musters up enough dignity to return the Commandant’s respectful nod. Still, he’s grateful enough that the man’s attention quickly turns back to Shiro. “I don’t mean to interrupt,” he says, “But a certain gentleman would like to meet with you before the night gets too much underway.”

“Stay here,” Shiro says, planting a hand on Keith’s chest and pushing him back gently into the alcove. “We’ll return.” It feels like a dismissal.

No, Keith realizes. It _ is _ a dismissal. Without waiting to see if Keith will obey, both men disappear into the teeming crowd. Keith’s eyes skitter over expanses of bared flesh, unable to settle, and his Master is swallowed up before he can even form a protest. Sulkily he leans back further into the alcove. To wait. It’s not so different from being in the Comtesse’s manor.

* * *

Long minutes slip away. The centerpiece entertainment of the room shifts with each new morsel paraded forth by a full blooded vampire. No one stays for long. Human thralls can only be fed on for a minute or two before their strength begins to flag and one risks breaking them. Pure fucking isn’t enough to entice the jaded courtiers. And admittedly, even he grows desensitized after one or two exchanges. 

Smartly dressed servants bear champagne. He ignores them on the first three passes, but steals a glass on the fourth. Getting drunk would be unwise—he settles for sipping at the frothy wine while glaring mutinously at no one in particular. Too late, it occurs to him that much of the night may be like this.

God forbid.

Bright chattering and moans wash over him in even this secluded portion of the gallery. The sudden hushing of it is his only forewarning. Well, perhaps he ought to count the way everyone parts as though they are the sea before Moses.

Moses is an excellently dressed and alarmingly tall man. White hair, unpowdered and untamed, cascades down to his slender hips. Even without his lips parted, the bulk of his fangs is obvious and predatory. No polite vampire keeps their fangs out at all times. It makes people—human people—uncomfortable. So this must be their host.

Keith grips his glass more tightly. If he breaks it against the wall, he could stab the Prince’s eye out before the man could take another swaggering step. A comforting thought. More’s the pity that he isn’t allowed to do such a thing.

“Prince Lotor,” the vampire says, coming to a stop at what Keith assumes is a respectable distance. For Versailles. And for impolite full blooded vampire princelings. 

Unorthodox greeting aside, Keith knows what he’s expected to do and so he does it. If only because he promised he would behave. A bow—that does _ not _ show his neck—and a murmured, “A pleasure, Your Highness.”

“Not _ your _ pleasure?”

Games, he thinks with disgust as he rises from the bow. Always _ games _ with these people. Schooling his face is significantly easier with the help of the half mask. Only having to control his mouth is half the battle won. “I don’t like wordplay,” he says. “I’m not good at it and I often give offence.”

The Prince smiles. Fangs make it more of a threat than it otherwise would be. “Do you prefer other kinds of play, then?” Carelessly he waves a hand, as if to encompass the gallery with all its indulgence.

“Not with strangers.”

“Masques make strangers of us all.”

“That’s not true,” Keith snaps. Beneath his fingers, the champagne glass gives a warning creak that he prays only he heard. Something about the Prince’s eyes makes him think that it’s a vain prayer.

Stepping closer, the Prince does not quite lean down into Keith’s space. Instead he looms. As though he imagines himself intimidating. “Is it not? Who do you know here, little thrall?”

Prince or no, Keith has never allowed anyone to call him that and he doesn’t intend to start here. “I am not a thrall,” he says. Loudly and clearly enough that they regain some of the attention they had lost. Ignoring the eyes on him, he makes and hold eye contact with the Prince before downing his champagne. As he lowers the glass, he lets it tumble through his fingers to catch it a hold quite different from the way one ought to hold it. More like a dagger than a drinking utensil. “And I know my Master.”

“How charming. And where is your Master, thrall?”

Growling low in his throat, Keith takes a step toward the Prince without really knowing what he intends to do. Stab the vampire with a champagne glass? That would be one way to make himself into a distraction.

Best not.

“Why don’t I go find him?” he says, enunciating each word as clearly as he can. He doesn’t like the amused gleam in the Prince’s eyes or the way he gestures his blessing. Steeling himself, Keith steps around the Prince and walks toward the crowd.

Before he can get far, a thrall is pushed into his path. The boy is young and dazed and bloodied, still giggling from the pleasure of the venom coursing through his veins. “Have you got something for me?” he asks. Unfocused eyes and spit shined lips means he hasn’t got a clue who he’s speaking to.

Keith presses the champagne glass into the thrall’s hand. Something twinges in his chest at the giggle he gets in return. Thralls are the lowest rung of vampiric society and he’ll die before he sinks that low.

Linger too long, and the claws always sink back in. “How sweet,” the Prince says. His heels click across the floor. Keith’s skin crawls. “But you rather make me wonder if you don’t have anyone to flee to. And you can see before you,” in the dazed eyes of this pathetic creature that Keith can’t help pitying, “what happens to those who come into this hall unclaimed.” 

“No,” Keith says. “My Master is—”

“Right here.”

Instinct drives Keith. Turning on his heel, he catches sight of Shiro shouldering his way through the crowd. Alone, this time, but that hardly matters. Eagerly, without a thought of all his carefully constructed bravado, he darts into his Master’s waiting arms. This is his harbor. Curled in the security of Shiro’s bulk, he knows that nothing and no one can touch him. Not even the damned _ prince étranger_. “I’m sorry,” he murmurs into the label of his Master’s coat.

“Hush.” A gentle hand strokes down his spine. “You did exactly as I asked.” Despite the reassurance, Keith can feel the power accumulating around his Master like the rumble before an avalanche. Few can command the kind of vampiric energy that Shiro does. It’s enough to send most staggering even in this tightly contained state. Keith is not most. To him, the surge of magic will always mean safety. “Remember? You obey, and I protect.”

The Prince’s laughter is like the icy rivers of home. “I see,” he says. “Of course. One might have expected that you’d be so lax with your thralls, Captain Shirogane.”

“I believe he already told you,” Shiro says. “He’s not a thrall.”

“Whatever is he, then?” Prince Lotor manages to layer his words with so many nuances. Even with the Comtesse’s tutelage Keith can only grasp half of them, and he doesn’t care to try for the other half. Around them, the crowd titters with delight. They’ve been watching all of this. Of course they have. Weighing and judging, as though they’ve any right or could hold a candle to someone of Shiro’s power.

Perhaps he ought to let Shiro handle this, but a response comes to Keith’s tongue. Sharp and hot and unbidden. Turning his head, he meets the Prince’s eyes once more in open defiance. “I’m his pet.”

“A colony distinction?” someone half hidden in the crowd asks.

Yet another someone, fully hidden behind the press, adds, “Well given his interaction with the Prince he does seem half feral.”

“Only half?” More laughter. These gaudily dressed courtiers are worse than the gawkers at a local fort, staring at whatever poor idiot got locked into the stocks, and they feel all the more superior for it. “Who knows. Perhaps the Captain is on to something. Feral sluts might give better sport.” In the space of a heartbeat he hates them. Them and their golden halls full of endless parties that mean nothing outside these sheltered walls.

Fuck, he hopes their dreams and their halls burn.

But shame has a nettle’s sting to it. He bites his tongue to keep from saying something else he’ll regret. When he’d been chosen as a distraction, he doesn’t think this is what either his Master or the Comtesse had in mind.

“Insult my pet again and I’ll have to call you out, Vicomte Prorok.” For a moment, Shiro lets the tight hold on his power slip.

The wards drawn into the walls—of course someplace this saturated with full blooded vampires would be warded—flare purple under the sudden strain. Frightened, the circle of onlookers shifts and eddies. No safe ground can be found and yet they seek it. Revealed by their cowardice is the Comtesse, somehow even more elegant than she’d appeared in the salon, her masque hiding none of her command. _ Distract them, _ she mouths, and is gone in the next swirl of the crowd. Still the wards flare higher. Brighter.

Keith forces himself to laugh. It shatters the moment, and what’s left in the absence of his Master’s surging power is a kind of airless vacuum. “Trust me,” he murmurs. “Please.” There’s a pause before Shiro’s arms tighten around him. He chooses to take it as acceptance. Inhaling deeply, he half turns in his Master’s embrace to eye the crowd.

“I give more than sport,” he says. Loud. Clear. Still defiant. “I’m a dhampir and a soldier. I’ve watched all your human thralls. They’re weak. _ Prey_. I’m not.” Trust me, he thinks, as he seals both their fates. “So why don’t we show you why my Master is the only one who can tame me.”

* * *

Keith remembers very little of what passed between his challenge and the finding himself in the center of the gallery on what had been the _prince étranger’_s throne. Somewhere along the way a different thrall—clearer eyed—had pressed a vial into his hand with a murmured _you’ll need this_. There’d been no time to ask what was in the vial, or even if it was safe for the purpose it was clearly intended to serve. Seated on the throne, he toys with the vial while eyeing his Master’s tense shoulders.

Shiro and the Prince are settling the boundaries and rules of engagement. At least, that is what Keith assumes. Maybe Shiro is simply trying to get them both out of this.

That should be comforting. Slipping his nail under the vial’s wax seal, he pops it off and feels something slick and oily spill over his knuckles. Keith swallows. Of course he doesn’t want to be fed on and fucked in front of the elite of Versailles. If Shiro can get them out of this without ruining the mission then that’s good, isn’t it?

Absently, he lifts his oiled fingers to his mouth and licks them. They taste sweet and have a tart aftertaste, like not-quite-ripened summer berries. Or like magic. Whatever he’s been given has been reinforced with it.

Decisions have been reached across the way. The Prince smiles, and Shiro nods, and whatever agreement they’ve made leaves both unhappy.

Quiet falls in the gallery as Shiro stalks toward the throne. Only a fool would find the predatory set to his dark eyes and easy gait attractive. Keith is a certifiable fool. Because when he thinks of all that power being turned on him, in front of all these people, something like need curls deep in his gut.

Shiro comes to a stop before him, gaze focused on where Keith’s fingers linger against his lips. “Give that to me,” he says. “And strip.”

“What—”

Perhaps Shiro mistakes the question for the beginning of a protest. His mechanical arm grips the back of the throne with cracking force as he leans over Keith. “You need to trust me,” he says. Gold rims his irises, and his fangs have dropped to their fullest and most brutal length. “If you say ‘no’ I will get you away from here and damn the cost. But until then, I will finish this game you started and you will _ obey_.”

Wordlessly, Keith hands over the vial. Enough of a concession that Shiro straightens and allows him to slip off the throne. As they exchange places, the excitement in the room gains its own kind of power. It’s own presence.

Just as he’s about to give in, to look around those gathered to see if he recognizes anyone, Shiro says, “Eyes on me.”

Not a difficult command to oblige. The throne was built large—likely to accommodate the Prince’s spidery limbs—but his Master fills it beautifully. He lounges on it with all the careless grace of a mountain cat. The mask covering half his face makes him nearly a stranger, but the eyes and the tilt of the mouth are so familiar that Keith finds himself comfortable despite everything.

Stripping is performed as a matter of efficiency rather than temptation. Half of his clothing is unfamiliar. Maybe people will think he lacks wiles. True enough. He does. But he’d rather be seen lacking wiles than being a clumsy oaf.

Keith knows his body—knows it’s compact and wiry and scarred. Knows that his skin has faded to porcelain after long months kept indoors. Knows that he lacks the body hair that the French fur trappers had always been so proud of. Simply put, Keith knows that his body’s not beautiful—not really—but he also trusts it. It’ll do what he needs it to, just as it always has.

When he reaches back for the laces of the corset, the last piece of clothing left on his person if only because of its complexities, Shiro holds up a hand. “Leave it on.”

“Yes, Master.” The title feels fuller in Keith’s mouth, now. Slinking closer to the throne, he pauses for only a moment to see if he’ll be stopped again. He’s not. Keith climbs into Shiro’s lap and straddles the thick breach of his thighs. It’ll cause an ache if he stays this way long enough.

Metal fingertips curl in the soft hair at the nape of his neck. Gentle, and maybe a little possessive. “What should I do with you, pet?”

“Anything you want.”

That gets him a hitched breath and a hand tightening in his hair. It obliges his head to tip back, even then tugging at his roots in a way that makes his spine tremble with pain-fed pleasure. Shiro nips at the throbbing pulse on his bared throat. Keith can hear his own heartbeat in his ears, roaring like thunder at this not quite forced submission. “I might ruin you,” Shiro confesses. “I might do worse than ruin you.”

“Do it,” Keith says. Begs. Prays.

Fangs sink into his throat, hard and sudden enough that he’s lets out an audible whimper. Shiro keeps him close with the hand at his nape. Venom slips through his veins. Humans go stupid with it—giggly and aroused and blurry. But dhampir…

Everything in the room sharpens. Clears. Focuses.

The warm, wet press of Shiro’s mouth has him hardening in seconds and his own fangs descending. Chatter from the crowd washes over him like caressing hands. Oil spills over Shiro’s free hand and drips onto Keith’s thigh. It’s warm, decadent, tingling with magic. The scent of sandalwood and blood clings to him, more intense as he dampens with sweat.

Glass shatters to his left. The sound is tinkling, like the windchimes he saw once at a homestead, and close enough that he knows it must’ve been the vial. Oiled fingers trail along his flank before dipping into the cleft of his cheeks. 

“Shi—” Catching himself, he presses his tongue to the back of one fang. When he can control himself, he tries again, with a soft, “Master.”

Pulling back from his feeding, Shiro presses a bloody mouthed kiss over the wounds and murmurs, “What is it, pet?” There’s a a gravel to his voice that wasn’t there before he gorged himself on Keith. If vampires could get drunk, they would do so on dhampir blood.

Keith allows himself a moment of smugness. He’s done this. Made Shiro this undone despite the danger of their situation. But the feeling dissipates as he presses his cheek against Shiro’s close cropped hair. Sometime in the feeding his arms had wound their way around his Master’s broad shoulders, and he clings now. “I— I haven’t done this before,” he admits.

Shiro _ growls_. Power surges once more, surrounding Keith with a new covetousness, even as Shiro’s fingers tighten on his nape with almost bruising force. In Keith’s heightened state, the implicit threat lands more sweetly than it should. “Should’ve known. You don’t do anything by halves.” His tongue flicks over the bite mark, almost delicate, but there’s a hunger to it. “Are you still with me?”

“I’m all in.”

This time he’s taken at two points. Fangs reenter his neck, even as Shiro’s finger sinks in to the knuckle more easily than he would’ve guessed.

It goes like this. He gives and takes what Shiro requires, until he’s rocking his hips into the stretch of three fingers even as more blood smears down his throat from the deep and greedy feeding. “More,” he says, again and again, breathless with the demand. “_More_.” Because there’s always more. Another finger curling deep into him, another lick against the bite at his neck, another jolt of pleasure that sends him reeling.

Pleasure hazes him in a way the venom never could. He runs his hands down Shiro’s chest—still clothed in the fine coat and finer shirt—until he reaches the buttons of Shiro’s breeches. Fumblingly he works each one open. Shiro pulls away from his feeding just as Keith gets his hand on the hardness he’s felt against his hip since they started all this.

“I want this in me,” Keith says, rubbing his thumb over the pearling head and grinning at the growl this gets him in turn.

Most everything he’s seen requires him to put his back to Shiro’s chest. He rises to his knees, placing his free hand on Shiro’s shoulder to steady himself against the tremble in his thighs. God, he feels like collapsing into a heap and they haven’t even gotten to the main portion yet.

“Where are you going?” Shiro’s hands cup his hips, spanning their entire circumference with an ease that would be insulting if it weren’t so damned arousing. Blood stains his mouth, and his fangs are still so far extended that they press into his lower lip. Keith wants to lick into him and taste his own blood.

Shaking the thought away, he tries to explain: “To—” Gives up. Makes an aborted noise and a gesture that he hopes conveys the positioning they need to get into.

“No,” Shiro’s voice is low and rich and full of command. “Come here.” Of course Keith would obey—he promised to obey, and he’s in far too deeply to protest now—but he’s not given time to. Shiro pulls him by his hips until he’s crushed against Shiro’s chest. Pinned like a butterfly on a board. “Down, pet.”

Obediently, Keith sinks down. He catches on what he’s meant to do and whimpers as he guides Shiro into him. Pleasure is a burn everywhere in his body—in his thighs, in his blood, in his hole force to accommodate beyond its limits…

He’s allowed to set the pace on that first slide down. Bottomed out against Shiro’s thighs, still clad in expensive wool, he tries to make sense of so much. All his life he thought pain was the most poignant sensation the body could experience. “I can’t—” he murmurs, tucking his face against his Master’s neck with a quiet whimper.

“You can,” Shiro croons. “I can make you.”

Keith wants to be made. Shakily, he nods against his Master. “Please,” he says.

One of Shiro’s hands, the human one, grips his hip a little tighter. The other tangles in the laces of his corset. It tightens just a touch, making it harder to inhale, but Keith’s barely breathing anyway.

Vampires are naturally strong, but his Master is strong even for a vampire. He sets up a punishing pace that Keith could’ve never hoped to manage or match. Still he tries—figures out the rhythm and rides his hips into each thrust. There’s a place in him that sparks with pleasure, leaving him almost helpless, and he wants to chase it but the closer he gets the less control he has.

Usually Keith is quiet—he learned early to contain the sounds of pain that could’ve brought predators down on him. He can’t be quiet now. When a particularly hard thrust nails that place inside him, he arches his back with a wail that rings off the gaudily painted ceiling.

“Fuck,” Shiro growls. He fists the corset laces in his hand, supporting Keith’s splayed body. “Look at you.”

All the air escapes from Keith in another wail. The laces bite in tighter, curled around metal fingers that have no give and no mercy. Without anything to stop it, the corset cinches even tighter around Keith’s ribs. An ache sets in. A burn because he can’t fully inhale. Keith stares up at Shiro with hazy eyes and wonders why the lack of air feels so good.

Leaning over Keith, Shiro nips at the bared skin just above the corset’s lace edge. “You’re fucking exquisite,” he says. “I never should’ve agreed to this. Never should have agreed to _ share you_.” Again his fangs sink in, this time into the meat of Keith’s chest, and this isn’t about feeding it’s about marking.

The corset tightens again, the laces straining near to snapping, and Keith can’t breathe through the pleasure. Whalebone stays press into his skin. Straightening his spine and leaving him in this helpless spill over Shiro’s arm.

“Please—” What else can he say? His fingertips claw at Shiro’s biceps, toes curling frantically, sweat slick skin sticking to the throne. “Please!”

Above him the gilded ceiling and crystal chandeliers swing in dizzy arcs. This golden room feels unreal. Like a dream he somehow stumbled into. The only real thing is Shiro. Surrounding him, filling him, leaving him anchored into a body that he thought he knew so well only he didn’t, he _ doesn’t_, he—

Something beyond pleasure splinters in his body. This time his wail is soundless. No air left in his lungs to expel. Spend splashes up against the silk of his corset and ruins it, but not so much as this blinding excess ruins the rest of him.

A low roar echoes in his ears—the sound familiar, a memory left over from the war—as Shiro drags him impossibly closer. Warmth floods him and he’s not sure if he’s imagining it or not. Certainly he doesn’t imagine the last snap of fangs into his flesh, this time digging in just above his heart like Shiro wants to devour him in that last most elemental way.

Too much strain has been placed on the corset’s laces and they snap. One. By. One. Keith inhales deeply, almost choking.

Shiro’s hand, still at the small of Keith’s back, slides up to curl over his shoulder. He’s hefted forward, until his face presses into the warm crook of his Master’s neck. Pinned once more, like he had been earlier, only this time he’s oversensitive and exhausted. Closing his eyes, he noses against where Shiro’s pulse would be were he human. “I’ve got you,” Shiro promises. “I’ve got you, pet.”

Keith suddenly feels breathless and flushed and desperate. Which is to say he feels all too achingly human. “Take me home?”

“Always.”

* * *

Someone leads them through the gilded halls. The man is very tall and slender, and fangs gleam when he opens his mouth to speak. Something about his manner is kind even though he must be a vampire like all the others. Keith feels oddly detached from his own body and from the conversation he knows is happening. It’s too much.

Whalebone stays bite into his torso as he tries to squirm into a more comfortable position. The torn ribbons of the lacing whisper against his skin as the corset parts ever further. Words and light flows over him without notice. Focusing on anything but his desire to lay down someplace dark and safe is an impossibility.

Finally Shiro’s arms tighten around him. “Be still,” he says. “We’re nearly there.” The command does what little else could. Keith quiets in his hold.

They come to a halt in a small and well furnished room. Despite the low burning fire, the air is frost chilled as so much of the palace is. The other man moves through the room lighting candles. A servant’s task, though he’s clearly not a servant. “You’d best get your pet to bed,” he says, lingering near the last candelabra.

“What of the wards?” Shiro asks. For a moment, Keith wonders if he missed more of the conversation. He must have—wards have nothing to do with where or when he sleeps. And he wants to sleep.

It seems the other man was prepared for this question. He whistles three notes, and wards flare with brief golden light that stings Keith’s eyes. Once all evidence has faded, he says, “Keyed to your bloodline, as requested.” Even through the haze of exhaustion, Keith knows what that means and takes in the room with new eyes. These are to be his Master’s apartments at Versailles, then.

Some of the tension seeps from Shiro’s body. He inclines his head in a nod of thanks. “You’re a good man, Ulaz,” he says. The man—Ulaz—nods back just a touch more deeply than protocol would dictate.

Keith thinks it’s odd, but he doesn’t have much time for it before Shiro lays him on a bed that’s far too fine for the likes of him. Voices pass over him. Tiredly he turns to his stomach and fists the plush coverlet in his hand. If he were sensible, he’d at least discard the corset with it’s damnable boning that presses into his ribcage. With a muted whine he buries his face in a goose down pillow that smells of lavender sachets. It’s a marked step up from the Versailles hallways and ballrooms.

Minutes later, he hears Shiro whistle the notes to lock down the wards. They must be alone. “Shiro…” he murmurs. A human would not hear him. But then, Shiro has not been human for a very long time.

“How do you feel?” The bed dips with Shiro’s weight as he sits on the edge. After what seemed like hours tangled in one another, the scant inches are like miles.

Releasing his grip on the coverlet, he bats the hand toward Shiro and doesn’t stop until it’s taken. Shiro’s fingers, rough with calluses from sword and musket, enclose his own. It’s comforting. Nothing in the world will ever be as comforting as his Master’s hands on him. “I’m fine,” he says. “You ruined my corset.”

Shiro huffs in amusement. Moving closer, he rubs his prosthetic hand down Keith’s bared spine with aching tenderness. The metal is cool but just as reassuringly _ Shiro _ as his human hand. Fingers curl around some of the torn laces and tug as he says, “I’ll buy you another.”

Sluggish he may be, but Keith knows well enough what the promise of another corset means. It means remaining at his Master’s side through the coming games. As distraction and possession and maybe, if he is lucky, beloved. “Do you promise?”

“Yes, Keith. I’ll buy you a dozen if you wish.” The promise is punctuated by a tender kiss to the nape of his neck. Shiro will not take him again—would never risk draining him too deeply—but there’s a hint of fang as he lingers. “Are you sure you’re alright?”

Turning onto his side is a kind of loss. It puts more distance between them, at least. Yet it also allows Keith to look up at his Master and to see his dark eyes made darker by the candlelight. Sometimes it feels as though he knows Shiro better than he knows himself. Now is one such moment, and he knows that no amount of spoken assurances will confirm that tonight’s game did not break something vital between them. Instead he lets himself smile—quietly, tentatively, hopefully—and ask, “Kiss me?”

Warmth floods his veins at the expression that crosses Shiro’s face just then. The hand still at his back skims up his spine to cup the back of his neck. His Master leans down and presses kisses to the corner of his eye, to his cheekbone, to the tip tilted smiling corner of his mouth. When their lips finally meet, it feels like it’s own kind of promise.

**Author's Note:**

> hi would you like to know about how much research went into corsetry in this fic??? too goddamn much. you can watch me cry in real time about that [on twitter](https://twitter.com/akaiikowrites).
> 
> p.s. if you enjoyed this, and would like to see more things like this or reward me for my dedication to 1770s fashion, you might want to check out the pinned tweet.


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